Join us at AIAA SciTech in conference sessions and in our booth to learn how we are advancing CFD with innovations in Uncertainity Quantificaton (UQ), Analytics for CFD and large CFD results handling. We have an eye on your largest problems today with HPC FieldView and FieldView 18 and are looking toward 2030 to ensure we will meet the needs of the CFD community tomorrow.​

Conference Sessions

John Schaefer and Andrew Cary of The Boeing Company and Earl Duque and Seth Lawrence of Intelligent Light

In a joint effort between the Applied Research Group (Intelligent Light) and Boeing Research and Technology (The Boeing Company), the application of the latest developments in Uncertainty Quantification (UQ) are demonstrated as case studies for industrial scale CFD problems. Starting with a 2D NACA 0012 airfoil at zero lift, then moving to a 3D full-scale aircraft in high lift configuration, the latest UQ frameworks are implemented to determine numerical and model input uncertainty. This effort provides a step towards standardizing the use of UQ as a design and engineering tool to build confidence and reliability in scientific computational engineering and design.

Assessment of Model Validation and Calibration Approaches in the Presence of Uncertainty

Thu, Jan 10, 4:00pm - 4:30pm, Harbor H

Nolan Whiting and Christopher Roy of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and Earl Duque and Seth Lawrence of Intelligent Light

This paper discusses the investigation and implementation of various methods for quantifying Model Form Uncertainty​ (MFU) in scientific computing. Metrics were obtained through rigorous implementation of several MFU methods to produce comparison studies that quantify the conservativeness of each method. The findings include which methods perform best under different circumstances and provide a guide to best practices when choosing a method for quantifying the model form uncertainty in a computational UQ study.

Computational Environments can be defined as the hardware and software required to efficiently use high performance computing resources and to easily extract knowledge from that data. As such, they underlie nearly all large-scale simulations. The CFD Vision 2030 report published recommendations for advancements in all areas of computational fluid dynamics that are needed in order to take advantage of Exascale hardware that is expected to be in operation by the year 2030. This paper summarized a special session held at SciTech 2017 sponsored by the Meshing, Visualization and Computational Environments technical committee that looked in more detail at the current status of computational environments and where additional research is required in order to efficiently use Exascale machines.

The session consisted of technical presentations and a question and answer period with a panel of invited experts. Computational environments are vital for efficient use of heterogeneous hardware architectures, large-scale data management, interfaces between multidisciplinary domains, uncertainty quantification and error analysis, as well as automation of complex simulations.

Spectre: A Computational Environment for Managing Total Uncertainty Quantification of CFD Studies

Fri, Jan 11, 10:00am - 10:30am, Vista B

Earl Duque and Seth Lawrence of Intelligent Light

The future of uncertainty quantification as a tool for computational engineering and design hinges on the management, execution and visualization of complex data-driven workflows. Whether the data is historic experiments or modern computational simulations, UQ workflows require onerous dedication to the management and synchronization of all available data. To address the needs of complex UQ workflows, the Applied Research Group at Intelligent Light has developed Spectre: A Computational Environment for Managing Total Uncertainty Quantification of CFD Studies. By encompassing a database, server and user-interface into a RESTful web deployed platform, Spectre provides seamless integration of data management, solver execution and visualization.

Bring CFD to Life

Predefined Materials Provide an Intuitive Materials Selection

Easily apply predefined material properties from the new Materials tab. No need to adjust a long list of light reflection settings. Choose between six predefined reflected environments for a realistic effect that suits your application. Then add a background image to further increase the realistic impact of your scene.

Editable Material Colors - Choose from Over 16 million Colors

Materials like glass and plastic come in various colors in real life. FieldView 18 lets you color your surfaces with a virtually unlimited pallet. Hit the color wheel icon to select from over 16 million colors. Save and reuse your favorites. There is no limit to the number of colors used per session.

Filter Bar for Boundary Types - Easily Group Boundary Conditions by Name

Type a word in the filter bar and the list of Boundary Types automatically updates. Hit Select All, then OK, and the corresponding Boundary Surface gets created. In the same way, Deselect All operates on the filtered list. The Filter Bar supports wildcards and has been designed for performance on 1,000s of entries.

Data Analytics - Intelligent Light Continues to be at the Forefront of Data Analytics Applied to CFD

FieldView 18 comes with new MATLAB/Octave scripts for querying CFD results over time, performing a POD analysis and writing the results to PLOT3D. This allows you to close the loop and visualize modes as Iso Surfaces in FieldView, as shown in this image. Save videos as individual images to run an analysis on the pixels and avoid having to resample your data.

ultraFluidX simulation results courtesy of Altair

FieldView 18 is loaded with speedups and other performance inhancements, new readers, and so much more.

Advances in the use of HPC, In Situ and Data Analytics for CFD dominate our contribution to SC18. Join us at events, in workshops and technical sessions and on the exhibit floor in Booth #826 to learn how these advances will help you.

Please join us on Sunday, November 11, 6:00 to 9:00 PM to meet members of the VisIt development team and fellow users of VisIt and Libsim. Wine, beer and food will be served. There will be two presentations:

- 7:00PM - Eric Brugger of LLNL will preview the upcoming VisIt 3.0

- 7:30PM - Brad Whitlock of Intelligent Light will update you on VisIt Prime, SENSEI and in situ

Advances in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and high-performance computing (HPC) have allowed an amazing increase in model fidelity. For CFD practitioners, these new capabilities present challenges with the analysis of highly unsteady flows of ever-increasing complexity. Simultaneous advances in data science offer promising techniques for resolving these issues that are just starting to be applied to CFD post-processing and knowledge extraction workflows.

The considerable interest in the HPC community regarding in situ analysis and visualization is due to several factors. First is an I/O cost savings, where data is analyzed and visualized while being generated, without first storing to a file system. Second is the potential for increased accuracy, where fine temporal sampling of transient analysis might expose some complex behavior missed in coarse temporal sampling. Third is the ability to use all available resources, CPU's and accelerators, in the computation of analysis products.

The workshop brings together researchers, developers and practitioners from industry, academia and government laboratories developing, applying and deploying in situ methods in extreme-scale, high-performance computing.

This tutorial covers the design and use of SENSEI, a platform for in situ visualization and analysis. Attendees will learn the basics of in situ analysis and visualization — which eliminates the need for writing large simulation state files or other data that prevents scaling to large machines — while being exposed to advanced analysis such as autocorrelation, interactive monitoring and computational steering.

Image courtesy of Michael Brazell and Prof. Dimitri Mavriplis, University of Wyoming

Spend time with our experts:

Come by Booth #826 or request a meeting, to learn and explore how we can help you advance your CFD.

In-booth presentation: Data Science Meets CFD, Steve Legensky

Tuesday, 4:00PM in Booth #826, followed by reception including beer and hors d'oeuvres

The Scientific Visualization and Data Analytics Showcase provides a forum for the year's most instrumental movies in HPC. Six finalists will compete for the Best Visualization Award, and each finalist will present his or her movie during a dedicated session. Movies are judged based on overall quality, how they illuminate science and on creative innovations in the production process. ​

I am honored that Altair has invited me to share the Keynote for the Applied Fluid Dynamics​ session and grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this major CAE event by addressing challenges facing the industry today.​

Altair customers rely on FieldView Express and AcuFieldView to help understand and present their CFD results to clients, management, other engineers and designers. With the presentation at this year's ATC, I will expand on the role that data science can play to increase understanding of CFD results and help companies make better engineering decisions.

Abstract: Over the last decade, advances in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and high-performance computing (HPC) have allowed an amazing increase in model fidelity. For CFD practitioners, this presents a new challenge with the analysis of highly unsteady flows of ever-increasing complexity. Simultaneous advances in data science offer promising techniques for resolving these issues that are just starting to be applied to CFD post-processing. In this presentation, we will demonstrate how FieldView can be used to better understand the random flow oscillations and heavy acoustic loads caused by an aircraft's weapon bay by performing Reduced Order Analysis (ROA) on the unsteady CFD solution of a rectangular cavity flow.​